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Your Smartass List of

League of Nations Specialist Terms

   

  

     

 Do you recognise the terms below?   Use them in your answers to impress the examiner!!!

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  •  Geneva
    • The Headquarters of the League of Nations
  •  Organisation of general competence
    • ‘competence’ in law is the legal right to do something; the League had ‘general competence’ – i.e. the right to do anything it wished which did not break international law … i.e. all the international rights of a nation state. It was the first international organisation to have this right, and you can see all the ways it used it
  •  Independent international actor
    • The League was not the first organisation to act on the international stage, but it was probably the first to be independent of national or treaty control
  •  Covenant
    • The promises of the signatory nations, and in its 26 Articles the Terms if reference for what the League would do.
  •  Collective Security
    • The basic idea behind the League of Nations - that, if the whole world agreed to protect a nation's boundaries and rights, that nation would not have to keep armies and fight wars to protect itself.
  •  Community of Power
    • One of the basic ideas behind the League of Nations - that, if the whole world agreed together to protect a nation's boundaries and rights, that it would have a collective moral power which would stop any country from attacking another country.
  •  Moral Persuasion
    • One of the basic ideas behind the League of Nations. It was thought that the weight of world opinion against nation which behaved improperly would 'force' them to change wrongs or end wars. Of course, big countries such as Italy, Japan or Germany just ignored the League's 'moral' influence.
  •  Condemnation
    • The mechanism of 'moral persuasion'. The League would 'condemn' a nation which acted badly or illegally. It was thought that the weight of world opinion against nation which behaved improperly would 'force' them to change wrongs or end wars. Of course, big countries such as Italy, Japan or Germany just ignored the League's 'moral' influence.
  •  Arbitration
    • Where nations were in dispute, the League could offer 'arbitration' - it would offer to judge the case between the two. The most famous case of League arbitration was in 1921 when a League enquiry found that the Aaland Islands should belong to Finland, not Sweden, and both Finland and Sweden accepted the decision.
  •  Sanctions
    • One of the powers of the League to force a country to do as it wished - it could ban trade. The League imposed sanctions on Italy in 1935 (it banned arms sales, loans of money and exports of rubber or metal). However, sanctions on trade harmed the countries of the League as much as the offending country - Britain refused to ban sales of coal to Italy because it would have out British miners out of work.
  •  Assembly
    • The main decision-making body of the League. It met once a year. Decisions had to be unanimous (a major weakness).
  •  Council of the League
    • A smaller committee of important members of the League (Britain, France, Italy, Japan and after 1926 Germany + some other countries elected by the Assembly). It met five times a year and in emergencies. It dealt with disputes between countries.
  •  Conference of Ambassadors
    • An informal meeting of the main countries of the League (Britain, France, Italy, Japan) which met to decide what it wanted the League to decide. Sometimes it would overturn decisions of the League.
  •  Agencies
    • The economic and social agencies of the League, including the Court of International Justice, the International Labour Organisation, and the Health, Slavery, Refugees and Mandates (looked after former German colonies) Commissions. Whereas the peace-keeping power of the League was not very good, the Agencies did VERY good work and the ILO and the Health Commission still exist today.
  •  Secretariat
    • Kept the records and prepared the agendae of the meetings. It was muddled and too small, which delayed matters and was a major weakness of the League.
  •  PCIJ
    • Permanent Court of International Justice, set up to try issues of international arbitration, breaches of the Covenant, the protection if minorities and general matters of international law
  •  Lotus Case
    • A 1927 landmark judgement of the PCIJ supported the right of Turkey to try a French captain who had sunk a Turkish ship, even though the incident happened on the High Seas. The decision still stands today, protecting shipping on the high seas.
  •  ILO
    • International Labour Organisation, an international forum for regulating the conditions of labour
  •  Washington Convention on Unemployment
    • An agreement in 1919 whereby signatory nations would send unemployment statistics to the ILO.
  •  Mandates
    • The power given to victor nations to administer the colonies of the defeated powers (e.g. Britain controlled Mandatory Palestine 1923-48).
  •  Washington Treaty
    • In 1921 the USA, Britain, France and Japan signed a naval agreement to respect each others' rights - since they should have been working through the League's disarmament commission, this was seen as undermining the League of Nations, and signalled the beginning of its failure.
  •  Locarno Treaties
    • An agreement in 1925 between France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Belgium to respect each others' borders. Since Germany signed voluntarily, this was seen as a replacement of the Treaty of Versailles, and signalled the beginning of its failure.
  •  Disarmament
    • All attempts by the League to get disarmament failed. A disarmament conference failed in 1923 because Britain objected. It took until 1931 to arrange another conference, which was wrecked by Germany, which demanded equal armaments with Britain and France.
  •  Geneva Protocol
    • All attempts by the League to get disarmament failed. In 1925 a mutual promise not to use poison gas or germ warfare - failed because Britain changed its mind at the last minute and refused to sign it! The USA and Japan also refused to sign.
  •  Kellogg-Brian Treaty
    • Frank Billings Kellogg (from the cornflake family) was an American lawyer who, through the League and with the French Foreign Minister Aristide Brian, arranged the Kellogg-Briand Pact - a treaty, signed by 65 nations, promising to end war.
  •  Manchoukuo
    • In 1932, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria and threw out the Chinese. They set up their own government there and called it Manchoukuo, thus precipitating the Manchurian Crisis.
  •  Lytton Report
    • Victor, 2nd Earl Lytton: responding to the Manchurian crisis, the League sent Lord Lytton to study the problem. His report - which took a year to write - blamed the Japanese, as a result of which the League asked the Japanese to leave, and Japan walked out of the League of Nations and attacked China.
  •  Hoare-Laval Pact
    • Although Britain and France condemned Italy in public, in private Samuel Hoare (British foreign secretary) and Pierre Laval (the French Prime Minister) met and made an agreement in October 1935 to allow Italy to keep Abyssinia. When it became known publicly there was a great outcry and Laval had to resign. It was the start of the growth of public opinion against appeasement.
  •  Contracting out
    • The right of nations to decided not to obey certain articles of the Covenant – for instance, many countries - including Britain - contracted out of Article 16, which obligated signatories to impose sanctions on any country which went to war.

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